Tag Archives: press freedom

Mideast unrest presents opportunities and danger (mostly the latter) for Western and Arab media. A quick overview of the state of media freedom in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and Libya. Egypt: Blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting the military. Activists like Mona Eltahawy and Basma Badr (via The Lede) are…

• Time meets some Gaza protest leaders who went underground in fear of Hamas. Think these Facebook savvy youth like Israel? But if both factions accept the terms youth organizers have laid out, Abu Yazan says, “Fatah is going to lose a lot too. They’re going to have to stop negotiating with Israel. They’re going…

With Gaddafi’s goons preventing foreign journos from leaving Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel to freely cover the unrest, one opponent of the regime did something extremely brave. A distraught woman identifying herself as Eman al-Obeidy simply walked into the hotel as reporters were eating breakfast and began telling them she had been raped by government soldiers. And as she…

Hamas would rather spark war with Israel (and the media) than make peace with Palestinians. Following the latest popular demonstrations for Palestinian unity, Hamas goons attacked media offices in Gaza and fired some 50 rockets at Israel over the weekend. The Committee to Protect Journalists elaborates on the media intimidation: Following a demonstration in Gaza City, Hamas…

Mubarak’s biggest apologist in Egypt’s state-run media is busy proving that necessity is the mother of reinvention. But Omar Saraya still won’t save to save his cushy job as top-editor of the state-run Al-Ahram. Leila Fadel visited Al-Ahram to interview Saraya, but she instead found: At al-Ahram, reporters and editors met for four hours Sunday to…

You know Mubarak’s in trouble when the chief editor of Al-Ahram — the major Egyptian daily better known obseqiously supporting the government — writes a front-page editorial supporting the protest movement. The Daily Telegraph explains: In a front-page leader, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Osama Saraya hailed the “nobility” of what he described as a “revolution” and…